You can tell that Hunter Seamons painstakingly mixed this version. Just listen to the others, and this one shines. Doesn't dominate Phil's low end. Audience participation is just right. Look at his notes. One pop removed by blending, perfect.

Thanks Hunter, from one Songcatcher to another.

Here is a story of playing this 40-year-old recording at Red Rocks on the anniversary: https://other2funstuff.blogspot.com/2016/11/grateful-dead-shows-streaming-to-parks.html
May 7, 2023 update (day b4 45 year anniversary). Scarlet still best song recording, Rhino CDs https://www.rhino.com/product/cornell-5877

Right on man..I'll have to check out that KY show...and the 75 one you mentioned..hope all is well cowboy..iko iko man.

Hard not to make a joke about this show! Only from the perspective that its ubiquity leads to its being dubbed "best." Likely it was one of the introductory shows shared by those "in the know" because it is exciting, adventurous, at times, and surprising polished overall!
agreed it isn't as dynamic as some shows, but some nights you got some parts, but not the others, and this one has most! in the words of lost sailor, where's the dark star? As ever, another great matrix, too!

I agree. I was definitely too young to attend this show. Although, I was 9 years old when it was played & was already a pothead traveling out of state for a concert was still a bit out of the question! And I can definitely relate about certain amps being special. As one that has owned a half-stack Marshall w/ 50 watt head & a 4x12" cabinet along with 67 Strat & 25th anniversary Goldtop Les Paul. There are certain ways you can get specific sounds & when you find what you like there is really no substitutes!!! And calling this show the best ever is like comparing apples to oranges. Especially when you factor in 8-13-75 comes to mind. And yes I've been to a number of Omni shows too that were great. Wish I'd seen 'em at the Fox in Atlanta. If ya want to check out some shows that were much later try 7-6-90 @Cardinal Stadium, Louisville, KY! Yeah, the Omni on April Fools day 4-1-90 was a smoker too. But in Louisville Jerry refused to leave the stage for "Drums", and how often did that happen???? Yeah, anyone that is a Deadhead heard this one on cassette many a times! This was probably the most well circulated bootleg recording of the Dead. I personally went through about 4 copies of this on cassette. Tapes do f#ck up at times!!! But what is awesome is running across all this stuff you've never heard before that's very sweet. And I was personally at that Louisville show(the Omni too) but as I was in the outfield, & it was only about the 7th or 8th Dead show I'd seen. But it sounds almost better here on the Archive than it did when I was there. And just in case you've never heard it, 12-18-73 check out the version of "Greatest Story Ever Told"!!! Definitely my personal favorite version of that song!

The "holy grail' of Dead Shows
and in good hands with Mr. Seamons.
Somehow I did not have this in my collection.
Having Englishtown 77 as my go to for 1977
(Also had a nice tape with Sunrise)
It is a tribute to the Dead that there is nothing extraordinary in this set list.
With the most tell tale sign of a hot show being
15 minutes of Dancin' 1st set closer, 15 minutes of FIRE and 15 minutes of NFA as part of 2nd set St. Stephen sandwich.
As I listen to this HOT Minglewood opener
the band especially Garcia sound pumped
and with the Matrix the crowd energy is evident.
Kind of interesting to get some taper comments
as opposed to stage banter.
Next tune that raises the energy level is the Jack Straw. (Usually opener/ rare closer)
Followed by a sweet mid-set DEAL
Lightning>Supplication often a set closer
also mid set.
While this is somewhat mellow.
I can definitely vibe
the energy level increasing.
Weir really tears into the lyrics
around Supplication.
To me any show that i caught a BE Woman
I was pretty stoked
Always raised the emotional level for me.
Mama Tried- a well placed Cowboy Tune
Common thread thru all these songs
is Garcia's guitar work is very straight ahead
Jerry is CRISP.
Row Jimmy-Another of the emotional type Garcia tunes and with plenty of room
to explore the jam
Always preferred an open ended extended jam tune as a closer and DANCIN' is Blazing!
This so sets up all that will follow this night.

I was at this show-my third of the Spring 77 tour-after New Haven and Springfield. Was it the best ever? All I can tell you is that we alll walked out of Barton Halll into the snow that night knowing that we had just experienced as high of a show as we had ever seen and likely would ever see. The Dead had brought us to the pinnacle- it wasn’t possible to imagine how anything could be better. The first set roaring out of the gate with minglewood and just outstanding versions of Brown Eyed Woman, Row Jimmy, Jack Straw and a funky Dancin that was on fire. But the second set was out of this world, the highlights for me being the Scarlet Fire and the whole St. Stephen not fade away-both the best I ever heard. This was before the days of easy tape aqusition-at this point I was just starting to get some chromium dioxide ( the gold standard) maxell tapes from the June 76 ( Orpheum SF I think). Never heard this tape until a few years later so the tape never colored my impression. And it wasn’t the LSD which we did at every show back then, nor the magic of the Ithaca waterfalls where we hung out-thiough those certainly added to the extricate atmosphere. I am here to tell you that we KNEW when we walked out how special that night was. This remains the highlight of my many years with this amazing band.

I got an account on here just for this review.

There are a lot of shows in this database. There is an intimacy between the audience and the band that exists in many of these shows but here it seems truly transcendent.

The crowd echoing off the walls of Barton Hall in response to the music like they are all on the same, clean dose provided by Timothy Leary.

And then I noticed this:

Cornell '77
The Music, the Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead's Concert at Barton Hall
Peter Conners
Cornell University Press

And I can't buy that article for the $22 they want for it but I believe it directly ties the magnificence of this show to LSD.

And I'm fascinated by this kind of unspoken connection.

Thanks for this matrix. The uncut Supplication is worth the price of admission here. I was at this show and the next night. I loved both, I personally prefer Buffalo. Maybe this show has been hyped so much the last 30 years that it has jaded my opinion. A classic night nonetheless. The Dew is just incredible on several levels. There are several Scarlet>Fire's I prefer, yet this is a great one. (See Normal or Cedar Falls '78 or Nassau 11/1/79. Or Providence, Hampton, and Philly from Spring '84) And people please chill when someone mentions how bad Donna was live, they aren't bashing her. Almost a third of the 350-plus shows I saw included Donna, she had real issues on stage. But it rarely ruined a show. A song, maybe. But it was a great era, you had to be there. In fact my favorite era includes Donna, '72-'74.

While this is an excellent show from a great run for the GD, I knock off one star because 1977 does not espouse the same degree of adventurism as some of the great show from 1968-1974. While the band was at its tightest, it was also at its most palatable to a large audience. While this is not a bad thing, it was the weird that grabbed me in the beginning, and which is not highly evidenced in 1977.
This is the Cat's Meow for many who did not get to experience the Lion's Roar of earlier years.

A magic show. But St Stephen....sigh

The second set always gets all the attention with this masterpiece, but if there's a finer row jimmy or minglewood please do tell.

I was wondering if there was a good matrix of this fine, fine show and here it is! And it's a glorious mix of both worlds.

Everything Grateful Hillbilly just wrote. :)

Steal Your Face!
"well now, the doctor call me crazy! some says I am, some says I ain't..."

So this is simple, as the Grateful Dead were all actually human beings (contrary to various lysergically induced musings), it was not possible for them to play a perfect show. Every show has a missed lyric or someone hits a clinker.

Additionally, every person has their own opinion, as well as their own subjective filter by and through which they interpret a show. Song choice/set list, era, and many other factors influence individual opinion.

That being said I keep coming back to this show over and over. Having listened to hundreds of shows, making my own list of top shows, revisiting those, etc. no show I have ever heard EXCEEDS this show. Personally I am a '73 fan, but there are valid arguments to be made for each era's superiority.

Here is why this show is one of, if not the best. All arguments about Jerry being the leader aside, he was definitely the heart and soul of the band, especially post Pig. Listen to the energy from the beginning to the end of this show. Listen specifically to the energy Jerry had throughout the entire show. Listen to what he is doing on the guitar in El Paso, Jack Straw, Deal, etc. and you will realize that there is an extra vibrancy even in the old standbys at the beginning of the show.

That doesn't even begin to consider the songs that everyone raves about, Row Jimmy, Dancin, Scarlet-Fire, St Stephen-NFA-St Stephen, Morning Dew...mere words cannot do justice. Words like amazing and unbelievable and incomparable don't capture the immensity of awe they inspire. The whole is far greater than the sum of the parts, transcending even time and space...

And PHIL, on PHIRE. Phil is the engine, driving the juggernaut. He and Jerry and Bobby were feeding off each other, inspiring each other, and the crowd was feeding off them, and they were feeding off the crowd. This is a shining example of how the Dead and the crowd all formed a cohesive, organic whole.

As a musician and a person who has observed many, many musicians over many, many years I can tell you that musicians are like athletes. Most especially, elite musicians are like elite athletes, there are days where everything you do is magical, i.e. "in the zone". For musicians, this is where energy and creativity combine with inspiration to flow as if divinely sourced.

For the Grateful Dead this happened many times. For the Grateful Dead this happened on the stage of Barton Hall, at Cornell University, in Ithaca NY on the 8th of May, 1977.

This was a favorite on tape in high school in the late 80s. I hadn't listened to it since then since it had been in heavy rotation. I have rediscovered it thanks to this amazing archive. Kudos to Hunter. This is awesome.

As always - PHIL is where it's at. His Bass is kickin.' check out a cool phil starfire bass tshirt and terrapin compass decal at www.justexactlyright.com

This concert made history. So will this mix. Wow!

Thanks Hunter for giving all the notes the space they deserve. So transparent I can practically see Jerry standing there...

Great show, great matrix. Thanks for all you do, Hunter Seamons!

yes this is definitely a killer show from a killer year perhaps their vest along with 73 for post-Pigpen Dead.but on the other hand it is highly over-rated in my opinion. I can't eally pick my favorite from this magical month. but it's really between 5/25, 5/26 or 4/23/77 oops not from May. having said that this is my favorite all-time Dew for sure and a Scarlet>Fire for the ages a top 5 all-time for sure. legend show and always worth the listen

My favorite show ever,,,,,thanks for learn.n me on the dead dad .RIP.(1955-2013) love ya

Please - someone help me out here. I was at this amazing show, but I've sworn all these years that the Dead opened the show with Mama Tried (it was mother's day). Totally wrong all this time? (Yet) another blown chip? Say it ain't so.

Many versions of this show are available. On a show with such an excellent soundboard and a good audience recording, a matrix is the best of both worlds, and hseamons seems to be the best at this sort of thing. (no offense to anyone else, I havent heard alot of others to be honest). This show is as well known as most officially released material, for good reason. The sound is superb. The band was on fire.

The best morning dew i ever heard...love this classic show....a must have in every dead heads collection.....

Began seing the boys in 1980 and for the longest time believed the 80's to be the best years. And then this matrix comes along from 1977. Stunning. Thanks Hunter for doing what you do. To be honest I have become a snob. Hunter's matrix or nothing. Thanks again.

The Mosque rules supreme!!!

Thank You Archives, Thank You Hunter

Klearjet

today is feb 29 no dead shows on leap year. so i went to the most downloaded section and decided to listen to this show again. went straight to s>f. this version is the perfect match of sb/aud. nice job. you can hear it so clearly with such great intimate crowd noise. phil bass is so clear as is the keyboards, guitars. the music is so good. if i had a time machince and could go back in time to a few times i might just go to Cornell university in 1977. I went and grabbed my best headphones and thank goodness I can have a taste of what a time machine might produce. as if i were plugged into the soundboard of 5-8-77. wow. 4.99998 stars

Alright, this is my favorite show of all time -- which I only know by streaming it constantly. How do I go about downloading it? When I click on each of the download links, it gives me a binary file that opens in TextEdit and is garbled code. I have a Mac, if that makes a difference.

Please help!

Best version of Row Jimmy Row!

Slide guitar sounds like a pedal steel!
Most incredible Jam!!!

MR

What Dead Heads can do with their CPUs. A-Fucking-mazing. I thank the music Gods graciously. I'm supplicating. WheW!

I had this on cassette. Then downloaded and copied to disk. Also as a podcast from Deadpod - thanks to "The Professor" at Mighty Fine 89. And now this excellent stream.

I've taken this show all around the world with me for nearly 20 years since somebody first turned me on to it in Ann Arbor Mich. Scarlet>Fire is only my second favorite. The jam on Not Fade Away is first. Jerry at top top form, all the way in tune with his aluminum Travis Bean. Enjoy.

Hunter,

Your matrix of swing 2/27 was perfect, I am currently downloading your source for this. Keep it coming. Happy new year and thanks for making these shows sound their fullest.

I thought this would adjust 97274, not create a new shnID, as what happened when I fixed Crazy Fingers in 10-10-82 before the 24 bit version was made. Oh well, just another source to add to the pile - and that's, OKAY.